Poor Logan! He's been waiting for nearly two years to get this chapter off his chest. Not that he wanted to go see the psychologist but since he did, he wants to be sure you read all 2,004 juicy words of pure Logan angst before anything else happens. Yes, two years and all it is, is more Emo. I hope everyone's been well and enjoys.

I did also publish a one-shot based on Heffron Drive's song called, appropriately, Home. Check it out. It's rated M because James drops the F-bomb often.

"So, you hate Kendall."

"I – what?" Logan snapped his head up so fast it actually hurt. "No! Kendall's my best friend!"

"He speaks! OK, so you don't hate Kendall. You're afraid of him."

"Afraid?" His jaw dropped as he shook his head in disbelief. "No. Where are you getting this?"

"From you, Logan. How about resent?"

"No."

"Jealous? "

"No!" Logan slapped the leather-padded arm of his chair. "Stop it. This is ridiculous. Kendall's my best friend!"

"Well," Dr. Jacoby settled back in his matching armchair with a look of gentle satisfaction, "it's nice of you to finally get with the game. And for the record I don't believe that you hate, fear or envy Kendall."

"Gee, thanks," Logan grumbled, irritated at having been tricked into talking.

"But you do hate, fear or resent something to do with Kendall."

Dr. Jacoby was a nice guy, a psychologist. Young, friendly. He didn't make Logan as nervous as he was expecting to be. But Logan still didn't want to be there. And he didn't care to offer any ammunition to be filed under 'unstable.'

"You're wrong."

"I don't think so. What are you doing right now?"

Logan stopped chipping away at the label glued to his bottle of OJ and quickly set it down on the side table.

"Kind of classic body language, my friend. Let's take a different tack. Let's call it frustration. Or worry, if that's more palatable. Didn't you tell me you're the designated worrier among your friends?"

Logan half smiled. "Not in the worry-free zone." He blinked a few times and swallowed back an unexpected lump.

"And what's that, now?"

"Worry-free zone." He breathed out a laugh. "Kendall, that morning, it was his idea. That we weren't allowed to worry about anything, just to drive and enjoy the view until we had to go back home. It was the whole reason he wanted to go out." Logan flicked a rolled-up piece of OJ label at the trash can. "You have to appreciate the irony."

"What is it you worry about, Logan?"

Logan shrugged. "Grades. A lot. Gustavo. Recording. Dancing. Touring. Being good enough."

"OK."

"OK?"

"Those are very standard worries for a boy your age. Not touring, specifically, but performance. Measuring up. That's nothing unusual and the way you so readily list them, you clearly understand them and aren't ignoring them. That's better than most."

"Oh." Logan ruminated on that statement for a second, surprised at the simplicity of it. "OK."

"But what about the rest of it?"

"The rest?"

"Worries. You're clearly holding out on me. Maybe on you."

"Nahhh. I'm, you know – everything's fine." Smile if off. Clap your hands. It will be fine. Jacoby looked at him expectantly, and he found himself compelled to continue. "I mean, the guys are a little goofy and sometimes…"

"Yes?"

Really? How was it the man could utter one syllable and make Logan want to bare his soul? Psychologist Jedi powers.

"Uh, sometimes they make stupid decisions and I try to talk them out of it?" Damn.

"So, would you say you're the voice of reason?"

"Um," Logan cleaned imaginary dirt from his fingernails. "I guess."

"Good. But that's common sense, Logan. Not worry."

"I don't… always talk them out of it."

"Ah," Jacoby tapped his pen at his bottom lip. Logan found it reassuring that there was a psychologist who bit the end of his pen. "So, worries?"

OK, Jedi pen. But somehow Logan was relieved to give in and nod.

"About what, in particular?"

"Hah, uh…About everything. Back home it was detention, suspension. Community service. Broken bones. That was mostly Carlos. Saying the wrong thing, making a fool out of himself, not paying attention to his surroundings? James. "

"You sound like their mother."

"I feel like their mother. About as unappreciated, anyway."

The doctor laughed. "Wait until you're actually a parent. You can't imagine."

"If it's worse than this, forget it. I won't have a child who moons someone twice their size."

"And that was?"

"Carlos and Kendall. Actually mooned an entire hockey team. I thought they were going to get killed." Logan backpedaled as he heard his own words. "I don't think I meant to say that."

"And yet you did." Jacoby put his pen down. "I get the feeling that's not the only time you've had that thought, Logan. And I don't mean in a casual-manner-of-speech way."

Logan crossed his arms in front of himself, his left thumbnail finding its way to his teeth. He remembered Kendall and Carlos with their icy insult as they were being tossed out of the game. And after, Kendall yelling toe-to-toe with Duluth's captain under the bleachers until the guy took a swing at him. He missed, but Logan had pushed Kendall back, and James helped drag him, and Carlos, away. He thought of all the times he saw bigger guys take swings at Kendall, some connecting, some not. He thought of times when Kendall had paid the price.

"I thought he was gonna die in hockey once." He couldn't believe he was telling this story. "This guy slammed him from behind, and his head hit the boards so hard. He couldn't breathe right after it happened."

"What then?"

"Cervical collar. They stabilized his head and back. Took him off on a stretcher to the ER. "

"Where were you?"

"They wouldn't let us near him." God, why wouldn't they? Logan had training, he could have helped. "The coaches, I mean. And the EMTs. Plus there was other, uh, action happening on the ice."

"Such as?"

"Such as Carlos attacking the guy who hit Kendall, James jumping in, and about 15 players wrestling in a pile."

"They didn't think it was an accident?"

"It was intentional." Jacoby, Logan knew, had already figured that. "The other team didn't like us beating them. Kendall was the captain, and he had just scored. I mean, Kendall'd been running interference all game anyway, keeping the worst of their guys away from…"

"Away from…?"

"James. James and me." Damn it, Kendall." He stepped in, made himself the target, kept attention on himself by talking trash. So when they wanted someone to take it out on…"

"So this is part of who Kendall is. Protector."

Logan's mental image flashed again, to Kendall in the high school hallways with Logan shoved behind him. With James shoved behind him. A member of the bowling team, a cheerleader, a band member, a foreign exchange student. And God help anyone who ever bothered Katie, anywhere. Kendall stood in front of them all, Kendall the protector. Who had always worried Logan sick. He nodded dumbly, looking Jacoby in the eye. "Yes."

"And you've know Kendall since you were kids. Do you see that changing any time soon?"

"No," he answered miserably.

"Neither do I."

"So I just live around him holding my breath, waiting for the next psycho to try and kill him?"

"Do you do that now? You being the worrier?"

"I'm always waiting for it. Always calculating the consequences if Kendall goes postal. Suspension. Losing his job. Being escorted home by police. That's how we came to LA, you know. Gustavo insulted James, Kendall came to his defense, we all got dragged off by the police. Gustavo liked Kendall's 'fire'." Logan snorted. Kendall's fire.

"In other words, the fierceness of his protective streak? The exact quality that causes you stress."

"Yep," Logan adopted a sarcastic false cheer. "And now I'll just have to add 'dead by the side of the road, intubated and comatose' to the list of potential outcomes."

"I think it's unlikely that you would encounter this severe of an incident again, don't you think?"

"Hello, hockey. He's already almost died twice."

"Well, the good news is that really reduces the odds of it happening again, right?"

Logan scowled at Jacoby's attempt at humor. Everything was getting so twisted up. Sinking his face into his hands, he felt sudden guilt at the whole direction this stupid conversation had taken. A whole emotion conga line. He was making too much of it. This was only a tiny side of Kendall. He was a true friend, a natural leader and yes, a protector who tried to keep everyone calm. Until he couldn't keep himself calm. And he, Logan, just needed to occasionally try to prevent that from happening. Compared to everything Kendall did, how hard a job was that?

"It's not your fault, Logan."

"How did you know – that's unsettling."

"Years of practice. Literally. Let's lay this to rest, and then we're done for today. You keep referring back to Kendall's condition after the attack."

"Kind of hard to forget."

"What about you?"

"What about me?"

"You didn't end up Intubated and comatose."

"I noticed."

"How did you end up?"

"Running like a dog?"

Jacoby rolled his eyes. "And after that?"

"Sitting uselessly on my ass next to my dying best friend?"

"Not useless, Logan. Who called for help? Who took care of Katie? Who got Kendall to listen when he was fighting the EMTs? Who provided the description that got the man arrested? You did. All of that. "

"It didn't matter." Logan shifted angrily. They'd been through this. "It was all too late."

"What could you have done earlier?"

"Fought?"

"Kendall told you to run. You know that you running with Katie saved her. "

"Driven differently. Not pulled over. Not gone in the first place!" Logan yelled.

"Ah. So if you'd stayed in the apartment, none of this would have happened. But why did you leave the apartment?"

"Kendall wanted to. He begged. And there's no- he's very hard to resist." He swiped at the tears threatening to fall.

"So it's Kendall's fault that this happened."

"No!"

"It's your fault."

"No. We should be able to go out and drive in a car, for God's sake."

"I agree. So how much farther back can we go for this blame? His mother?"

"What?"

"Well, certainly she could see he had a self-sacrificing protective streak a mile wide. Why did she raise him that way? Couldn't she beat it out of him?"

"God, Kendall's the best son – back home, he did everything. He worked and cooked and watched Katie and—"

"Then maybe we should blame his father?"

"Yeah. Yes. Let's blame him." The bastard.

"OK, let's." The psychologist leaned forward and tilted his head to the side to make eye contact. "So," he continued in a gentle voice, "unless you'd been there to stop Kendall's father from being Kendall's father, because we've agreed that's where this protective issue originates, there is nothing you could have done to prevent what happened on Saturday when a stranger attacked Katie, and Kendall fought back, and asked you to save his sister. "

Logan wipes his eyes one last time and managed a small smile. "You don't play fair. "

"I only lay out the facts as you present them to me, Logan. You are in no way responsible for what happened on Saturday. Nor are you responsible for Kendall's personality traits, positive or negative. You are, however, responsible for choosing how you go on from here."

"What do you mean?"

"You saw very frightening things on Saturday, things you don't ever want to see again. But you hold this belief that as long as you stay friends with Kendall, there's a risk that you might. That's the fear, Logan. That possibility. You have to decide whether you want to live with that fear, and if so, how you are going to learn to handle it. "

Oh sure, he could do that. Not. "Gee, is that all?"

"Yes." Jacoby was standing, offering his hand to Logan. "You're stronger than you think you are, Logan. I'll see you next week. Meanwhile, if you need me, you call. I'll be here." He gave a gentle squeeze to Logan's shoulder as he opened the door. Logan looked into the genuine face and decided he might believe him. Maybe. And stepped out into the empty hall.